Yerba Loca

A few weeks ago we went on a beautiful walk in a nature sanctuary called Yerba Loca not far from Santiago. Back then we decided to come back for more over the long Easter weekend, and so we did. This time equipped for a couple of nights of wild camping.

Yerba Loca is an Andean valley that can be accessed via the route to Santiago's ski resorts. One has to fork off the paved road at approximately 1900m above sea level and from there pretty much only has two options to progress: 1) by horse or 2) using one's own feet. It goes without saying that we opted for the latter.

The main attraction of Yerba Loca, other than the clean air and beautiful mountain scenery, is the La Paloma Glacier. Getting to the base of the glacier at 3500m above sea level is an 8 hour trek. With three days to play with we opted for setting up our base camp half-way up in the valley.

Like last time, we "smuggled" Mario hidden in the boot of the hire car and got in without problems. Over the course of the three days we saw 4 other dogs who accompanied their respective owners on their mountain walk, so we stopped feeling bad about breaking the rules pretty soon. Just like we figured last time, the "no dogs" seems to be no more than a suggestion which everybody ignores.

Along the way through the U-shaped valley one is never far from a river, which is handy as this meant we didn't have to carry that much water with us without the risk of running dry as it happened on our Cerro Provincia walk in December.

We set up camp around 2800m above sea level, after climbing 900m over the course of 5 hours. Although we had about a hand full of other tents within 300m of us, it was a truly enjoyable and quiet wild camping experience.

During the night temperatures dropped to close to freezing and Señor Mario Carrasco ended up inside the sleeping bags. Not quite sure who benefitted from whose warmth but in any case nobody complained too much. (o:

The morning of the second day we left camp before the sun had climbed high enough to shine into the valley, and so some of the “Las Cascadas” were frozen when we passed them. (Rumour has it that there is some ice climbing to be done here in winter)...

We started catching first glimpes of the glacier at the distance but equally impressive where the views across the valley which we had climbed so far.

One can get a pretty good and relatively close-up view from around 3500m, where the glacier currently ends, but we ascended a little further. At roughly 3900m, all three of us a bit short of breath now, we decided to call it a day.

Although certainly impressive, the La Paloma glacier seemed tiny compared to what we saw only a few months ago in southern Patagonia. But of course, La Paloma and the other glaciers of central Chile are very important for the water supply of the capital region and surrounding area.

We returned to our tent just before the sun disappeared again behind the mountains, followed by another quiet full-mooned night.

On Sunday, our third day, we packed up our gear again to head back down towards civilisation. A thoroughly enjoyable weekend! More photos as Flickr slideshow (klick to start).